 Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of our VGC 2019 guide series, we're going to be continuing on this guide series today looking at a brand new Pokemon that we've now got access to in the Ultra series, I'm really excited to get into this one today so sit back, chill out and I hope you enjoy the episode where we're going to be taking a look at Mega Gengar. So welcome to today's episode guys, I hope you're all doing well and thank you so much for tuning in, as I mentioned at the start of the video, we're going to be looking at Mega Gengar in today's VGC 2019 guide. It's going to be a lot of fun, it's a new Pokemon that we've got access to, it's super powerful, super strong and it's got a lot of potential and there's a lot of wriggle room with how you can utilise it in this format. You don't need to just go down a standard 252 to 252 route, there are a lot of options here with Mega Gengar and we'll try and approach a few of those today to give you some examples to go away with. As always there will be sample teams, they're all in the description below, we'll get to them as we go through the guide, but without further ado let's jump into this one. And as always guys, if you do enjoy this content please remember to leave a like on the video, make sure you do subscribe to the channel for more Pokemon content and leave your comments in the comment section below. Let me know what your thoughts are on Mega Gengar in the Ultra Series. So as always we're going to start off with a Pokemon overview, we can see here we've got Mega Gengar on your screen looking all big, bad and mean. It's got the ability Shadow Tag, so whenever a Pokemon with Shadow Tag is active on the field it prevents all opposing Pokemon from manually switching out. That means if you're out on the field and Mega Gengar is active then that Shadow Tag is active and you cannot change your board position with the Pokemon that you've got out on the field. Unless they are a ghost type, so if they're a ghost type they are immune to the Shadow Tag ability, they can switch in, switch out as much as they want. And the other way to get around it is with pivoting moves, things like U-Turn, things like Vault Switch, they will allow your Pokemon to attack, but at the same time they can attack into something and pivot out so you can get them out of harm's way and bring something in that has maybe got a bit of a better matchup against Mega Gengar. Parting Shot along with that as well is another option there. So Pokemon Details, obviously it's going to be Mega Gengar. It is a poison and ghost type, it's Pokemon ability. First body before it does Mega Evolve and then Shadow Tag when it does Mega Evolve and it's got a base speed of 130. Some important points there just to keep in mind. Based at totals you've got 60 HP, 65 attack, 80 defense, 170 special attack, 95 special defense and 130 speed. So it's got a phenomenal speed stat. It's going to be one of the fastest Pokemon that we've got access to in this format. And then you can see the next stat in line is going to be that special attack, 170 base special attack. A phenomenal power that it's going to have to be able to just throw out those special type attacks, predominantly what it will use and do some real damage to opponents, especially with the ability Shadow Tag and being able to trap them and deny them ability to switch out into something that maybe resists those poison and ghost type attacks that Gengar will throw out. The drawbacks with Mega Gengar as with normal Gengar are it's a bit of a glass cannon. It's not the strongest defensively and that's 60, 80 and 95 defensive distribution there. It won't be able to take attacks like some of the other Mega Pokemon in this format. But it is compensated by its speed and its attack that do make up for it there. It's type strengths and weaknesses. You're going to see it is weak to ground, ghost, psychic and dark. So some pretty bad weaknesses that it's got there. All types that are quite popular in this format. Immunities to normal in fighting. And then it's got some nice resists there. Poison, bug, grass and probably the biggest one there being fairy. So there is a basic overview of Mega Gengar. Now we'll jump into our first sample set to kick us off today. So sample set number one, we're always going to have to have that Gengar out because we need to Mega Evolve into Mega Gengar. Without it we won't be unable to. With this sample set we're going max speed. So it's going to hit that raw speed stat of 200. And that concludes that we're going to have to have a timid nature with that. EV spread, nothing complicated here. Just simple, straightforward. 4 HP, 252 special attack, 252 speed. We want to just be maximising that speed stat, maximising the damage I've put here with this Mega Gengar. And then a move set, we went for Shadow Ball, Sludge Bomb there. Kind of going to be a stables on this sort of move set. I've chosen Hidden Power Water here because it is something that we're commonly seeing players use, especially when paired up alongside that Kyoga for the rain to switch in and then disrupt the desolate land on Primal Groudon. Especially if you've got a trapped in and then just Hidden Power Water and pick up a quick knock out there. Protect something that you're going to need to help kind of manoeuvre your board positions and just give Gengar a little bit more protection. Especially if you need something in next to it to protect it against a certain threat. You can see from offensive calculation examples here that we've got your 252 Special Attack Mega Gengar. Hidden Power Water versus a 252 HP, no special defense Primal Groudon in the heavy rain. It's always going to be a one hit kill. And you can see it's by a considerable margin here. So even if that Primal Groudon has quite a considerable amount of special defensive investment, you're still likely to pick up the one hit kill there in that situation. And then the defensive calculation, although we haven't really invested in defense, you can still see that a minus one, two, five, two Attack Mega Rayquaza Dragon Ascend versus this particular Gengar is always going to be a two hit kill. So as long as you can guarantee getting an Intimidate onto your Poison Rayquaza, you can sit in front of it and take a Dragon Ascend pretty comfortably. You're not going to be in good shape going into the following turn, but if it means that you're able to get an Attack Off onto, say, a Partnering Pokemon or even a nice Wind onto the Rayquaza because you're immune to the Extreme Speed, it does put you in a bit of a better position. Restricted Partners that we're going to look at with Mega Gengar to start us off with are going to be things like Evelta, Kyoga and Rayquaza. Now, Evelta and Kyoga are a really nice pairing here because Evelta gives protection against all of those opposing Ghost types that Gengar has issues with. It also has a nice switching to Dark types that Gengar doesn't like to deal with. And then you've got the Kyoga there which pairs nicely with that Hidden Power Water and have that combination there. Rayquaza is another one that you could also pair alongside Mega Gengar but because you've got the Dual Mega, you have to consider that if you're building your team and if it's going to suit or not because sometimes you may want to bring the Mega Gengar and it's going to mean that you're kind of restricted in certain aspects because you can't mega the Rayquaza and get as much potentially out of it as you would otherwise. Non-restricted Partners you're going to look at. It's something that's picking up a lot of popularity with Gengar. It does give it that nice protection against those electric type attacks especially from namely Tapa Coco there. Incineroar is going to be another one, another staple that you're going to see quite commonly with Gengar. It does offer Intimidate Support, Faker Support and it's also got that nice Dark typing that protects it from opposing Ghost types and a nice switching to Dark types a bit like how the Evelta performs and then another option you're going to see is Bronzong. So Bronzong has a levitate ability so it does nullify a little bit that ground weakness set and I switch in if you've got a ground type Pokemon out in front of Gengar and you want to just alleviate that switch the Bronzong in and it also gives you a different mode speed control because Bronzong predominantly going to be a trick room set so having that kind of mode where you can just switch things up get your trick room up and get something like Kyogre in which is going to be Slower and Bulkier to operate under that and then you've got two nice modes to your team so you've got two ends of the spectrum there really fast one, really slow one. Pokemon checks you're going to see things like Incineroar going to be really difficult for Gengar to deal with doesn't really want to sit in front of them especially if you're considering that the Incineroar might have the Incinium Z the Z move there which can just pick up a one hit kill pretty easily Evelta goes without saying it's going to be something else that does threaten Gengar pretty heavily and then Primal Groudon as well if it can get itself positioned where you can't get your rain up or the Kyogre has been gone then that him power water can't really touch you anymore and Groudon is going to have a really easy time because of those super effective ground attacks that it can throw out at Gengar so that is the first sample set it's very straightforward but does a nice job it puts on a lot of pressure against a pausing Pokemon and makes it very difficult for your opponent to kind of maneuver their board positions around as long as Gengar's alive and kicking on your side of the field with that Shadow Tag ability right we'll move into our second sample set now which is going to be another timid set we're going again with Max Speed because one of the things you go to consider with mega Gengar is that it has got such a high base speed so taking advantage of that takes out a lot of the Pokemon in the format making sure that you can hit them before they can hit you and you know that is a good old saying in Pokemon if you can hit the opposing Pokemon before they can hit you and you can knock them out before they can knock you out then most of the time you're going to win a battle I know it sounds really straightforward but it is you know the basis of most Pokemon games so maximising that speed here is a very important thing I think for Gengar most of the time you can sacrifice that and we'll get into that a little bit later in this guide series but for this set we're just going to keep that Max Speed Timid 252 speeds that with a distribution elsewhere of 92 HP, 44 defense 100 special attack and 20 special defense now for the move set here you can interchange things you've got sludge bomb, shadow ball, icy wind or taunt or even disable here if you're playing something like Whimsicott that we've got listed next to it here you can have that on cold disable combination that is so devastating for opponents to deal with and then protect again as we mentioned previously how important protect is on mega Gengar just to prolong that shadow tag for as long as possible to make sure you can get a board position to really stop pressuring your opponent's Pokemon and getting yourself into a great position before Gengar actually does go down now taunt is a very nice option you've seen a lot of players use that now that's a good way to shut down set a Pokemon, especially things like Zerneus maybe even Smeagol, stop that from being able to just really lovely kiss or spoil targets on your side of the field or even icy wind there's a nice form of speed control as well in Gengar that we've seen do so well in previous format now we'll move on to offensive calculation just to give you an idea of what this EV spread can do so 100 special attack mega Gengar helping her and shadow ball this is a 4 HP, no special defense shadow shield, Lunala is a guaranteed one hit kill so if you're pairing it up with something like that Whimsicott and Whimsicott has got help in hand there's always that option there to go with the help in hand shadow ball, turn 1 you can't be faked out because help in hand obviously has that priority bracket at higher than fake out so it'll always go before it and Gengar cannot be faked out anyway unless there's something like a scrappy canvas card or a scrappy lawpony sitting in front of you which you can easily identify so you've got that option to always be able to remove Lunala from the field as easy as that now the defensive calculation here is a 252 attack plus so an adamant parental bond mega Kangascon sucker punch versus this particular Gengar has got a 0.4% chance to 1 hit chaos so as long as you're full health you've got the safety knowing that you're going to be able to take that sucker punch from a mega Kangascon so that's pretty nice there and that is the double hit as well restricted part is you're going to see with this particular Gengar there are more options you can consider with mega Gengar things like Primal Groudon, Zornius and also tagged in there Zygarde as well so Primal Groudon will appreciate being able to have things trapped in so it can come in safely it doesn't have to worry about Kyogre switching in on it to disrupt its weather threaten it and it'll be able to set up maybe a substitute sword stance and start throwing out some big damage same goes for Zornius, you know a lot of players if you can catch them out with board positions they get Zornius in and they can't switch in their checks for it you can get set up pretty easily and then start cutting through the Pokemon that you want to be able to deal with leaving the counters in the back for you to kind of deal with after you've dealt with the present threats and then Zygarde there kind of acts a little bit like Groudon but it does appreciate being able to trap things in and get itself set up before those said threats come in when Zygarde is probably in a much better position after boosting up so it can deal with those a little bit better especially with some Gengar support next to it then non-restricted partner as you're going to see Celestila Celestila is a really interesting one it's got the ground immunity obviously and it's got the psychic immunity with that steel typing as well so it's a really nice switching from a Gengar and helps it with a flurry of support options there like wide guard and just leech seed just to really slow the game down and disrupt your opponent and make it very difficult for them to kind of deal with that sort of threat so it's got a nice partner for Gengar in general and then Tap of Finny obviously with the Misty Terrain going to be very useful kind of pairs nicely with Gengar and then we've already mentioned the Whimsicott offer speed control as well and then has that on-core help in hand support there that would be really beneficial for something like Gengar just to help maximise its potential and disruption in games then you're going to have Pokemon checks some things that I've just thrown in there going to be Megagarados, definitely one of them the Gengar needs to look out for Dark type, we'll be able to do some big damage and you're going to find it hard to out-damage Gyarados because of how bulky it actually is once it does mega-evolve alone in Persians picking up a lot of popularity at the moment so that's something that you need to watch out for and maybe not so popular but something you definitely don't really want to be sitting in front of for too long is going to be that Manderbuzz with its Dark Flying typing as well so that is our second sample set of the episode and we will move on to our third sample set which is going to be a little bit different now we've went for a really straightforward one in this guide so far, we've went for a little bit of a bulkier one that can still perform quite well with some additional support like Helping Hand but now we're going for a really extremely bulky one that can take quite a lot of attacks and it is going to catch your opponent off guard, it's going to be quite surprising for them so we've got a calm nature here, we've got raw speeds that have 158 so out-speeding all of those base 90 max speed primals just getting the jump on those and the one thing that you have to really consider if you are slung Gengar down and bulking it out, it's making sure that you are identifying the benchmarks this is an example of what you can do with Gengar so identify your speed benchmark and then adjust from there identify the things that you want to be able to calc against, so let's say you wanted to be able to calc against a Dragon Ascent from Omega Requaza okay well let's see what you can do to tweak these EVs to make sure that you can survive that attack and then let's have a look at what we can do to the speed stat to hit that benchmark can you add speed or max speed base 100 can you add speed or max speed base 110s if you can't add speed the 110s and you can add speed the 100s what can we do to alleviate the weakness that you've now got to those 110s and that's how you need to work around it you need to set yourself benchmarks when you're doing EV spreads and then work to those goals if you can achieve them if not you have to re-evaluate those goals and maybe change things up there maybe you'll get to a point as well where you think I can't actually reach this goal I can reach this goal but it's not really worth it in the grand scheme of things and it's not going to work as well as it can in a game so that's when you have to maybe rethink and go back and you know a lot of the time players will say oh it's just 252 252 but look at what it's doing because sometimes that's all you need because you needed to hit hard you needed to hit fast you needed to pick up certain kills where it might be missing them out otherwise so going for those spreads isn't the worst thing in the world but as long as you're hitting your benchmarks as long as you're hitting those knockouts that you need to do then it's all justified but getting back to this spread here because that was a little bit of an insight that we went on a bit of a tangent so we've got a raw speed stat of calm nature on this we're going a bit slower bulkier and you can see from this 168 speed stat they were going to be outspeeding all max speed base 100 pokemon so guaranteed to outspeed all of them and anything below that so that's a lot of your restricted pokemon in that speed bracket that you'll be outspeeding EV spread here we've got 108 HP 196 defense 20 special attack 140 speed we've got a move set of sludge bomb shadow ball, icy wind, taunt, disable there's willowiz, pinpower, water there's so many different options and even trick room is an option to play on this gengar if your team can and will benefit from it and then obviously to protect so an offensive calculation example here for this specific gengar is a 20 special attack invested mega gengar sludge bomb versus a 4 HP no special defense so that's a pretty nice calculation just to have in the bank especially because it's a pokemon that just threaten you so heavily and then a defensive calc just so you know it's going to be a 252 attack so a jolly mega requiser dragon ascend versus this particular mega gengar is always going to be a 2 hit kill so you can sit in front of that mega requiser and just know that you're able to take that dragon ascend with or without an intimidate on that opposing one, restricted partners again you're going to see things like eval tol groudon and zernius all really benefit from that mega gengar and it's trapping ability and then non-restricted partners as well stack attacker acts a little bit like the bronzong although it doesn't have the ground immunity there but just gives you an extra mod to the team especially if it's carrying the trick room then togo tomorrow and komo all is something that we've seen in past formats do really well with mega gengar again it goes along the same lines as zernius and other set of pokemon that want to sit in get set up, deny the things that really counter those set up options for yourself and then start the sweep from there, things that are going to check and be very dangerous for mega gengar and you need to be very careful of things like tabulele, it is tending to be scarfed in this format especially at the early stages of this metagame mega muti y another pokemon that will just naturally outspeed mega gengar and do some big damage to it and then lunala as well with that cheva shield ability we saw in one of the previous sample sets that you need help and hand support to make sure you get the knockout through that shadow shield ability that lunala carries so if you don't have access to that or a way to chip the shadow shield before gengar attacks then you are going to be in a little bit of trouble because it will be able to take the shadow ball otherwise so there are some sample sets this is a bit more of a different one, a little bit of a bulky one but hopefully it gives you an idea of what you can do with gengar and how you can manipulate it to perform a different role in the team although still being very effective at what it does and what you need it to do we'll jump in next and take a look at some sample teams that I've got for you guys to take away and get you started with mega gengar in this format, you're going to see the first one here mega gengar primal groudon, primal kayaga tapu koko, incineroar and bronzon so it's a mixed dual primal team here with the mega gengar being able to trap your opponents in and then dictate the weather whichever one sees fit and then we've got the sample set number two which is going to be mega gengar primal groudon, incineroar tapu finni and kartana and then the third sample set which is going to be a dual mega team with the mega gengar, the primal kayaga the mega requiser is an option there talk about incineroar and celesteela so there's some nice sample teams for you guys to try out take away, get used to mega gengar and maybe it will inspire some further ideas for you all but all the teams are down in the description below and do let me know if you do try them out what your thoughts are on those teams so we'll finish up with a counter table and summary of gengar, so we can see that it is a poison ghost type we've already covered the shadow tag ability max speed it can hit is 200, minimum speed it can hit minus nature is 121 and the common speed that you're going to see on mega gengar is always probably going to be that 200 raw speed stat so there the benchmarks that you need to note down make sure that you have things that are faster than that possible of being faster than it in certain situations and things that are slower than it if you are going down a trick remoot to easily deal with it and stop it being such a problem for you and the rest of your pokemon support checklist if you're playing mega gengar you're going to need speed control it is very fast but the likelihood is your opponent knows this and they're going to try and get their speed control going as quick as possible to try and give them advantage going forward so you need counter measures to that and with that intimate support we've seen how vulnerable and frail mega gengar is so having that intimate support alongside it is so useful you're going to need dark ghosts, psychic and ground checks and switches in for those as well to really alleviate those weaknesses there redirection is always very helpful especially against those type threats that are normally single target attacks and then pivot support as well which allows you to switch out and gain a better position protecting gengar and also making better use of that shadow tag ability that it does carry now pokemon threats you're going to have to keep an eye on for eveltil prime suspect number one here because it is going to give gengar all sorts of issues as access to sucker punch and all those other dark types attacks that will be doing so much damage to gengar you're going to have tapulele we've already mentioned predominantly going to be scarfed in this format and will add speed with the scarf mega gengar so you need to be very careful around that mega gengars are going to be a problem as well if you want to risk the speed tie there then be my guest but it's going to be very difficult to get around opposing mega gengars you could go down a route you can calc to survive in opposing mega gengar shadow ball so you can always return with your own shadow ball and pick up the kill but then you've got to ask your question is it worth it for what you need gengar to be doing in a battle not just for that one particular pokemon then you've got a lulan persian mega mutu y and lunala are things that we've already mentioned pokemon walls, incineroar definitely going to be one of them so bulky going to be able to take a flurry of sludge bombs from you and return with some very devastating dark type attacks you're going to have primal ground on primal kyle guard put in there as well because it's so especially defensively bulky it is going to be able to take whatever attack from gengar pretty easily and then return with some big powerful water type attacks do have the potential to pick up a knockout if you're not careful mandibos also going to be something to worry about zygote especially with those ground type attacks and then mega garados so they are the pokemon threats pokemon walls just some examples to give you guys and I hope this has been an intuitive guide and really useful for you going forward with mega gengar now it's a very strong pokemon that we've got access to in this format and it's a very unique one with that shadow tag ability being able to pin your opponent in and not allow them to switch out and then gain an advantage on your side of the field by switching in something that deals with both of them it's just remarkable so it's something to be aware of something to really try and make yourself in games because other players will be and make sure you've got counter measures to dealing with mega gengar how you're going to adapt to that remember when does mega revolve that first turn from gengar into mega gengar that's your opportunity to switch out because the shadow tag isn't active until it has mega revolve when that turn starts so make sure you do switch out or have pivots in place that can pivot out and then get something else and it's better equipped at dealing with mega gengar but I hope you've enjoyed today's guide guys and leave a like on the video as I mentioned earlier do subscribe to the channel for more pokemon content and as always leave your comments down in the comment section below let me know what your thoughts are of mega gengar in the ultra series I would love to hear from you all and get your opinions if you've been playing already in this format so we're going to wrap things up there guys we'll be back with another guide very soon thank you so much for tuning in have a great day and I will see you all for the next one until then guys take care and bye bye